When I met my friend today, we were lost about where to go, so we went to Esprit Cafe. They have a nice terrace on the Spui, but today was a bit rainy unfortunately. The terrace was still full though, people hidding under the big parasols, so we took a place inside. Inside the tables are quite close together, forget about having a private conversation 
Luckily our neighbours left soon.
The service was very speedy. The girl that came to take our order punched it in into a wireless handheld and it goes straight to the kitchen. They have different kinds of sandwiches, salads and fingerfood here to choose from. I took a Coast 2 Coast sandwich, with cheese and avocado and alfalfa.
The sandwich arrived quite quickly. The filling of the sandwich was very generous and it was very tasty, although difficult to eat with so much filling. But Im not complaining 
My friend had taken a cafe latte, which was served in a bowl instead of a cup which is a bit funny.
All in all a good place to go for a speedy lunch or a lounging on the terrace on a nice day in the middle of Amsterdam.
Esprit Cafe
Spui 10
020 6221967
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Popularity: 16% [?]
On this sunny day (05-aug-07) we lunched at the esprit cafe. Very disappointing!
We had a hot mexican wrap with ’salad-on-the-side’
Small portion, and the ’salad’ was one (1) letuce leave and 3 tomato slices.
The baggle with tuna salad was just a baggle, 1 lettuce and a tablespoon of tuna-mayonaise.
As mentioned already, the koffie verkeerd is served in a bowl. So it isn’t very hot when you get your coffee and also the same dutchy amount. Then with all the milk foam it’s more a cappucino.
Sorry to hear you had a bad experience at the Esprit Cafe, gbruit. It sounds like you salad-on-the-side was more decoration!
It is very dutch to make the koffie verkeerd like a cappucino in holland, sometimes a cappucino has even less foam than a latte.
I guess I was lucky with my choice on the menu that day.
We had our first Lunch in Amsterdam at Cafe Espirit. Beautiful setting, and it was a very beautiful day, but horrible horrendous service. Sorry to say this but the service was border line racial. We were sitting for 30 minutes (and I am not exaggerating) without anyone even coming to us for an order. Multiple efforts to request some one to even take down our order were competely ignored. Finally when we actually complained inside did a lady take our orders but brought only 1 of the items after 30 more minutes… Turns out she had not ordered the 2nd pasta we had asked for… another 15 minutes later we finally got the 2 dishes for which we were waiting for over 75 mins. The most irritating part was that EVERYBODY around our tables were served well but since we were stupid ENGLISH speaking people we were completely ignored. EXTREMELY HORRIBLE experience. Food was very creamy and cheesy and Service was HORRIBLE. GO and sit there if you wish but good luck with ordering… Would never recommend this place if you want to EAT.
That is a horrible experience of the Esprit cafe, Vik. I know a lot of tourists go to the Esprit cafe, so they should be used to serving English speaking customer. I think the staff must have been having a real bad day
Vik, what you describe sounds like typical Dutch service, you get over it pretty quickly when you live in Amsterdam